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"At Mail Call Today" is a song written by American country music artist Gene Autry and Fred Rose. The two had a successful song writing partnership dating back to 1941, including "Be Honest With Me", "Tweedle-O-Twill" and "Tears On My Pillow". Rose, with Roy Acuff, founded Acuff-Rose Music Publishing in 1942, and in 1947, would go on to producing Hank Williams. Autry, after a brief lull in film making due to WWII, would be back to his pre-war output by 1946.

Background

The song is similar to other contemporary love songs and deals with the possibility of unfaithfulness. The lyrics describe a young soldier opening a Dear John letter at mail call and learning that the girl he loved from back home has left him. The final words reflect the soldier's despair:

Good luck and God bless you

Wherever you stray

The world for me ended

At Mail Call To-day.

Chart performance

The song, recorded in December 1944, was Gene Autry's most successful song on the Juke Box Folk charts, peaking at number one for eight weeks with a total of twenty-two weeks on the charts. The B-side of "At Mail Call Today", a song entitled, "I'll Be Back" peaked at number seven on the same chart.

Charts

References

1. Library of Congress. Copyright Office. (1945). Catalog of Copyright Entries 1945 Music New Series Vol 40 Pt 3 No 1. United States Copyright Office. U.S. Govt. Print. Off.
2. "At Mail Call Today". 45worlds. Archived from the original on 2017-09-11. Retrieved 2021-07-19.
3. "Hillbilly Recordings – Month Ending August 30, 1941" (PDF). The Billboard. Cincinnati, Ohio. 30 August 1941. p. 104. Retrieved 17 July 2021.
4. "Hank Williams 78rpm Issues". jazzdiscography.com. Retrieved 2021-09-09.
5. "Sioux City Sue". www.tcm.com. Retrieved 2021-09-09.
6. Smith, Kathleen E. R. (2003). God Bless America ; Tin Pan Alley Goes to War. The University Press of Kentucky. p. 44. ISBN 0-8131-2256-2.
7. Jones, John Bush (2006). The Songs that Fought the War. Lebanon, NH: University Press of New England. pp. 256–57. ISBN 978-1-58465-443-8.
8. Whitburn, Joel (2004). The Billboard Book Of Top 40 Country Hits: 1944–2006, Second edition. Record Research. p. 35.

Further reading

• Cusic, Don. Gene Autry: His Life and Career. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2007. ISBN 0-7864-3061-3 OCLC 81150476
• Jones, John Bush. The Songs That Fought the War: Popular Music and the Home Front, 1939–1945. Waltham. Mass.: Brandeis University Press, 2006. ISBN 1-58465-443-0 OCLC 69028073
• Kingsbury, Paul and Alanna Nash. Will the Circle Be Unbroken: Country Music in America. London: DK, 2006. ISBN 0-7566-2352-9 OCLC 71248377
• Wolfe, Charles K. and James Edward Akenson. Country Music Goes to War. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2005. ISBN 0-8131-2308-9 OCLC 56421871

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